• Rich Barlow

    Senior Writer

    Photo: Headshot of Rich Barlow, an older white man with dark grey hair and wearing a grey shirt and grey-blue blazer, smiles and poses in front of a dark grey backdrop.

    Rich Barlow is a senior writer at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. Perhaps the only native of Trenton, N.J., who will volunteer his birthplace without police interrogation, he graduated from Dartmouth College, spent 20 years as a small-town newspaper reporter, and is a former Boston Globe religion columnist, book reviewer, and occasional op-ed contributor. Profile

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There are 18 comments on BU Leaders Oppose Trump Shutdown of DACA

  1. Maybe if you could get past your blind hatred of Trump then you might see this as an opportunity to legislate what should have been legislated in the first place. You know like we learned from schoolhouse Rock. Obama’s action was illegal and gave these people no path to citizenship. Maybe instead of prayers you should contact your Democratic reps and tell them to start working with the president

  2. Congress has had since 2012 to take one of Pres Obama’s executive orders and make it into law. You know…follow the democratic process. We can’t allow any President to issue “royal decrees” no matter how noble the cause, because 1) it goes against the intent of our Constitution and 2) as we now see, the next administration can easily change, rescind, or even reverse such an order. So pray and demonstrate all you like, but maybe we should also be encouraging our Congress to do the right thing and pass a bipartisan version of DACA the President will be willing (or forced) to sign into law. Then if you still feel like praying, say a “thanks” to the One many of our founding fathers trusted to help them establish this great nation. Let’s also not forget our own civic duty to embrace immigrants and help them to assimilate. Or have we learned nothing from how we have treated our Chinese, Irish, Jewish, and even Japanese immigrants in the past?

  3. Please. Just stop. Stop opposing everything trump says or does just because trump says or does it. The legitimacy of these complaints is even lower than the boy who cried wolf at this point. Your democratic freedoms are not nearly in as much jeopardy as you would pretend they are. A country has every right to determine who can and who cannot come in to live there. As long as there are countries this will remain true. I really wish you would stick to doing what you do best. Providing a good education and stay out of politics. It’s beneath you

    1. It’s nice to see all these positive comments for what the President did. I’m glad to see that not all of BU is full of hard core left leaning people. Let’s face it, our last President hijacked the democratic process. This is a righting of the ship, and now places the burden on Congress to do, or not do, it’s job.

  4. What Obama did was basically defer action on the issue leaving his successor to forge a solution. That was not cool, brave or bold, it was lazy and cowardly. POTUS is asking Congress to WORK!

    1. Seriously? Defer action for a successor? What POTUS did was tell Congress to debate and legislate DACA so it might become an actual law instead of an illegal exercise in pencil magic where his predecessor left it. If President Trump’s action leaves anyone in doubt, a re-visit to a primary school Civics textbook might be helpful.

  5. The irony of this is we clamor to send our kids to study abroad, to work in the world, to be global citizens, yet in our hubris we claim that successful DACA persons who are ” business owners, college graduates, getting master’s degrees and PhDs, and contributing to our communities,” would be TERRIFIED to leave America? The world is a great place!! Why would one be terrified?

    My issue with Daca is it is expensive for the student, does NOT give a clear path to citizenship, just kicks the can down the road. Trump did the right thing. Now let’s stop being so arrogant about America. The global community could benefit from having well trained smart business people return and add their experience to the country. (85% of Daca are from one country alone)

    1. Whom do you think is going to have a better time: A Christian woman with American citizenship visiting Saudi Arabia, or a Christian woman suddenly deported there from the US with no citizenship, cultural knowledge, or fluency of language?
      An extreme example, but illustrative of your willful ignorance.

      1. Personally I don’t believe, education system should be voicing an opinion. The people of that organization certainly can and should share their mind but for an academic place to say we are hard left or far right, is only turning off the people of the other side who are attending, want to attend I’d have attended and think great this is what my alma mata is now a part of. The object of a school is to teach how to properly have a meaningful dialogue and research the facts to see both sides of a story. But when a school or institution of higher learning takes a stand, tiring it’s name to a side it is setting up barriers against the opposing views and potentially blinding a generation to choosing their own side because if my institute of higher learning says it is the best then I should as well. As opposed to individuals.

      2. According to the data I reviewed, there are no Saudi DACA recipients. I appreciate your extreme example but if these adults are functioning, there should be no reason to be terrified. It’s hubris.

    2. You can’t (or shouldn’t) really be comparing US students voluntarily going abroad with people that may be forced to leave the US and return to a country they may never have been in. Students going abroad are likely going to a place where a good amount of people speak English and where they will likely only spend a semester or a year. They will have the support of the university, as well as local staff in their host country. DACA recipients could be sent to a country that is possibly dangerous and where they may not even speak the language of said country. They won’t have the support of a university, and they can’t choose to back out after a semester if they decide a life abroad isn’t for them. DACA recipients aren’t afraid to leave America because they are afraid to travel or to be “global citizens”. They are afraid of being sent back to a country they have little to no knowledge of. Of course the global community could benefit from having “smart business people return and add their experience to the country”, but only if they want to and have the ability to do good in said country. Maybe their home country isn’t in a place that would allow them to put their knowledge to good use. I think the comparison you have used isn’t really fair.

  6. Donald Trump, in 2012, in his own words:
    “You have people in this country for 20 years, they’ve done a great job. They’ve done wonderfully. They’ve gone to school. They’ve gotten good marks. They’re productive. Now we’re supposed to send them out of the country? I don’t believe in that.”
    I guess that was before he needed to start pandering to a more… patriotic… demographic.

    1. But Trump doesn’t want mass deportations, he wants to protect these young adults. A flimsy illegal executive order is not secure, Trump made the right move by killing DACA and allowing congress ample time to pass real comprehensive immigration legislation instead of not doing anything about DACA and allowing a 10 state coalition tear the whole thing down immediately.

  7. I am appalled by the predictable but shallow reaction to cancelling DACA. DACA was never “illegal,” but it was also not “legal” in that it was substantially legislative action from the executive branch. Trump didn’t make the DACA children hostages – Obama did by using them as a political pawns, and giving them essentially an entitlement not available to those would-be immigrant families who are conscientious enough to seek legal residency. The DACA parents, ultimately, are responsible for bringing them illegally into the US. Immigration law is a mess, but I cannot agree that DACA was a reasonable attempt to address those problems. It feels good to give a pass to people – is it 800,000 or double that? – but now this non-Congressional quasi-legislation has made effective changes by Congress more difficult, more complex, and more certain to entail needless hardship.

  8. I’m proud of the stand BU leadership is taking to support DACA students. Unless you are indigenous, you are the offspring of immigrants living on stolen land. Before we speak on behalf of other children of immigrants, listen to some of their stories, like Paramedic Jesus Contreras of Houston, whose tireless work to save people devastated by Hurricane Harvey is now rewarded with the threat of deportation. Read Iraq War Veteran Will Fischer’s testimonial about the hundreds of DACA recipients who literally put their bodies on the line by enlisting in the army and are now are treated as criminals.
    This isn’t about law and order – its about trump pandering to white nationalists who want to preserve and grow white supremacy. It’s of a piece with pardoning racist Joe Arpaio, who brags about his sickening “concentration camps”. Its about trump following up on his “Mexican rapists and bad hombres” comments and his racist attack on Judge Curiel’s “Mexican heritage”. Its consistent with trump’s xenophobic and unconstitutional call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
    There’s a place on BU campus that has become special to me in this time when we must combat hatred and bigotry more than ever. Its the MLK Jr. (GRS ’55) marker in Marsh Plaza. Every time I see MLK’s face I’m reminded of two things he wrote that give me strength and hope. I get the strength to resist injustice cloaked in “law and order” from his letter from the Birmingham Jail: “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws”. And I get hope from “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”, because I see that overwhelming love and solidarity in the BU community for our DACA students that prevails.

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